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Joy, in the place in the scene, so much tragedy. This square was the scene of one of South Africa’s darkest chapters, the 1976 Soweto Uprising.
Some 20,000 high school students marched to protest the apartheid’s government’s insistence on teaching in the Afrikaans language. Police opened fire on the marching children. Estimates vary on how many children were killed -- some go as high as 700. One of the first victims was 13-year-old Hector Pieterson.
That fateful day, June 16, is now celebrated as Youth Day. Many of the surviving students are now grandparents, but, the memory has never left them.
“When the shooting started, I was not sure it was a gun. It sounded like a cracker, until I saw a boy was next to me bleeding from the hand. Then it’s when I realized that, actually, these people are shooting, they’re using live ammunition. Students ran into the neighboring houses. Police followed by throwing tear gases around there.”
Those horrors seem distant for today’s children, but they say they are grateful for the sacrifices made by those who came before them. “Let us thank them for what they did for others, because we have freedom. We can do everything in this country.”
The older generation says the efforts were worthwhile. When she was a student activist, Florence Kganye says, she and her friends were repeatedly jailed and beaten.
“It was worth it because what we fought for, what the other students that died fought for, at least we do have the freedom now that we were fighting for, yes.”
Young and old agree that South Africa has yet to live up to the ideals those students originally sought.
Last year, university students held protests demanding free education. Protesters say the government’s failure to support them is effective economic apartheid. The debate continues.
The struggle, veterans say, remains the essential role of the youth. They have the rage, the time, the energy, to keep up the fight -- and hopefully, make tomorrow’s South Africa a better place.
Anita Powell VOANEWS Johannesburg.
